[PULSING MUSIC] VO: This program is brought to you by the members of WCNY - thank you!

VO: The William G Pomeroy Foundation helps people celebrate their communitys history by providing grants for historic markers and plaques nationwide.

Information about Pomeroy Foundation grants and partnership opportunities is available at WGPFoundation.org Bear Creek: gourmet burgers, craft beers, custom twists on classics and desserts.

More on Facebook and Instagram at BearCreekRestaurantInc Feed the bear!

[BEAR ROARING] MATT: Spatchcock Funk in the house -- our house, and your house too.

You know where the party's at?

Wherever you're at.

We're gonna teach you how to throw the best parties the best dinners, the best get-togethers All you need are the people that you love, and we'll take care of the rest.

Spatchcock Funk.

Dope food, strong drinks, great stories.

[synth music] MATT: When was the last time you did something for the first time?

Or been somewhere you haven't been before?

Life should be an adventure.

It doesn't have to be expensive.

It just has to be real.

And at the Funk, we're all about adventuring, escaping the day-to-day.

Sometimes you got to color outside of the lines, break some rules, and break yourself too.

So it's time to break away.

Mount up your posse, we're going on a mission to connect with our people, to go to a place that can change us for the better.

It's time for a picnic, y'all.

So to find great adventure and create lasting memories, you've got to learn to be comfortable being uncomfortable.

We're going to make a fire spread and spread out a nice blanket and soak in the love and the view.

We're going all the way up.

This is Top of the World.

[synth music with vocals] MATT: If you're going to party at the top of the world, you need a top shelf cocktail.

So this is the Nirvana Sunset.

So we use a beautiful rose.

My grandmother taught me a bunch of stuff about cooking and she said, always use good ingredients, wine, crackers, whatever you're doing.

So in her honor, we're going to roll with that.

We're also using Bartlett pears.

And these were her favorite little treats.

They make a great little sweetness with all the rose, all the sugars we got going in here.

And it's just something that makes me happy, makes me think about her.

One time I was cooking, she sat there, and she would look at me and say, now look it - and give me advice.

And she's like, get a job, you fat jerk.

No, I'm just kidding.

She's an awesome human being and taught me really fun, cool things.

So we're going to raise one up for her.

Bartlett pears.

Let's get started.

So we have two 750-milliliter bottles of a good rose.

I'm going to put that in a container that we can mix.

[bottles chugging] Always pour as close to the bottom as you can to avoid splashes and splash back.

So the Nirvana Sunset is actually a sangria using rose.

So we've got our two bottles of wine in here.

We're going to put in 2 tablespoons of a white sugar and 1/2 cup of orange liqueur.

Just like saying liqueur, it's very fancy.

We're going to give that a little bit of a stir.

Next, we're going to put in one whole chopped up pink grapefruit.

Then two of those Bartlett pears chopped into little cubes.

Get them all in there.

Finally, about a cup of some halved strawberries.

We're going to stir that up.

We're going to put this in the fridge for at least eight hours, we like to let it sit overnight and make it just - you want magic to happen when you're out in your little trip, make magic happen first in the kitchen.

So it's sat overnight.

Now we've got a plastic container that we're going to use on our little trip.

And we are going to pour this gently in, a lot of the fruit.

Now we've got a little bit left over.

And here's the deal.

This is for tomorrow morning after our trip.

Because if you want to avoid a hangover, the best strategy is to stay drunk.

So we just serve it, and you can shake this while you're there, but it should be pretty evenly distributed now.

And we are just going to open up a cool little glass, plastic wine glass that travels well.

We're going to make sure it tastes good, we don't want anybody to be under or over-served.

Then we garnish it with a halved strawberry.

[synth music in background] Sangria, beautiful people.

That's what's up.

[instrumental lofi music] MATT: If you want new experiences, you have to mix things up.

This is the remix to the classic mac salad.

We're going to make a pesto mac salad, which we call Return of the Mac Salad.

But first, we're going to show you how to make a basic, classic, beautiful pesto sauce.

So you're going to take about 1 1/2 to 2 cups of fresh basil leaves, get them into a blender.

Then you're going to take 6 cloves of minced fresh garlic and put that in there.

If you have garlic scapes in your garden, you can use 12 of those too, actually, that'll work.

We're also going to put in 1/2 teaspoon of kosher salt.

Then we're going to coarsely chop it until it's good and chopped up.

[blender buzzing] Now we're going to add in 1/2 cup of extra virgin olive oil.

We're going to push everything down to the side, and we're going to blend it until it gets into a kind of thick paste.

[blender grinding] Now press it down one more time.

And now we've got the color we want, we're starting to see that beautiful pesto bright green.

And now we're going to add in the rest of our ingredients.

So we're going to put in 1 cup of grated, really good Parmesan cheese.

We're also going to put in 1/2 cup of crushed walnuts.

Some people use pine nuts, and that's fine, but walnuts are actually cheaper and they create more of an evenly balanced flavor with the other stuff we have in the rest of the salad.

Now we're also going to add in another 1/2 cup of extra virgin olive oil, but you need to determine what consistency you want.

We want it to be smooth so it can blend well with the mayonnaise, so this is what we use.

[blender grinding] For a good mac salad, a mayonnaise-based mac salad, you wanna use a pasta that can absorb and hold and really hold up to all the beautiful flavor in there.

We've got quattrottini, so it's got four little tubes on it, but you can use penne.

You can use elbows if you want, but something sturdy and strong.

So you've got a pound of that cooked.

You can cook this the day before too, and put a little bit of olive oil in a bag, throw it in the fridge, you're good.

We're gonna put in about a cup and a half of some chopped arugula, little peppery flavor in there.

We're gonna put in 8 ounces of Peruvian pearls.

These are these beautiful, delicate little peppers that are kind of sweet with a little bit of spice, but not enough to really set things off, and the color is just fantastic.

We're gonna put in another 1/2 cup of that really good grated Parmesan cheese.

Also a 1/2 cup of more of that coarsely chopped basil.

That basil sweetness is just beautiful.

We also got 8 ounces of some sauteed and cooled off, quartered baby bella mushrooms, because the adults are, they're kind of jerks while their babies are so tasty.

We're also gonna put in about 1/2 cup of broccolini florets.

These add a little bit of a crunch to the salad, and just make you feel a little bit different - you know, broccolini, eh!

We're also gonna put in 2 tablespoons of chopped fresh chives.

So, now the mayonnaise.

You can put in 1/4 cup to a 1/2 cup, depending on how creamy you want it.

We're gonna go with cup of mayonnaise, and then we're gonna put in about 1/2 cup of that pesto that we made.

[lofi music in background] Ooh, that's what's up.

So just gonna stir it up, give it some turns.

[instrumental lofi music] Yo, we're all mixed up.

Time to get a bite of this, I'm gonna get one of these pearls on here, some of the broccolini, some of the pasta.

The flavor combo is so good, with all these flavors just coming together for a party.

You could eat this by yourself with nothing else, but we got more to make, so let's do it.

[hip hop music with vocals] MATT: When you're making good food, you want your fish as fresh as possible.

So we're getting it right from the source, y'all.

[hip hop music with vocals] We got some beautiful freshwater fish here, like this gorgeous King Salmon.

Look at this, how lustrous it is.

So we're going from the boat to the kitchen, y'all.

[hip hop music with vocals] MATT: You know we're trying to keep things wild today, so we are gonna make salmon run salad.

And it's called that because this wild-caught salmon was on the run when we got it.

So we're gonna use that for the basis of a super bright, super fun dish.

Summer, fall, any time, this makes everything a little bit better, warmer, and nicer.

For any good salad -- you can use this in a sandwich but we're instead gonna make a dip.

So we're gonna make crostinis.

Crostinis are made with the French baguette, an awesome loaf of bread.

We've let this one sit out for a day or two.

And the thing is, if you want to do something different, make some great dishes, explore your life, you gotta break out of your comfort zone.

You just gotta break something.

So this bread, right, is crusty in the right way.

So we've sliced them up into quarter-inch slices.

We got 'em in a pan right there that we've already sprayed.

And we're gonna take about 1/4 to 1/2 cup of olive oil.

We're gonna put in 2 cloves of garlic, freshly crushed garlic, 2 tablespoons of Italian seasoning, and about 1/4 cup of fresh chopped parsley.

We're gonna mix this up really good and evenly.

This is gonna become our basting oil.

So crostinis get that nice flavor on top of it.

And if it seems like it's a little thick like this, just keep adding oil till it's about 50% oil.

So we've got our mixture here.

We added some more oil to make sure it's nice and thinned out.

And we're gonna take a nice brush, and we're just gonna brush every single one of these, and then flip 'em over.

Once you've done one side, we're just gonna flip 'em over, and then brush the other side.

After we've basted both sides, it goes in the oven at 375 for about 5 to 7 minutes.

Take a look after five minutes, and then you're gonna flip 'em and get 'em nice and crunchy.

Now the oven's at 375, we've got another greased cookie sheet, and we're gonna put our salmon on there.

And we're gonna put it in for 10 to 12 minutes until the salmon is just cooked through.

Same temperature.

We got this salmon out of the oven.

It's still warm, and we want that.

So what we're gonna do is we're gonna basically flake it off the skin.

Normally we love salmon skin, but we are gonna flip it and put it into a bowl.

As you go over that, you're gonna see some of that gray flesh at the bottom.

We don't want that only because of the color.

The taste is great, but we wanna keep our color consistent.

So we're just gonna put our fish into a bowl.

It'll flake up a lot more when we break it all out.

Then we're gonna put it into the fridge or your freezer for about 10 minutes just to cool it off so we can mix it all up.

Time to make a run on this salad.

We've got 2 1/2 pounds of chilled, perfectly cooked salmon, wild caught.

We're gonna put in 1/4 cup of chopped green onions, 1/4 cup of fresh dill.

Now the dill gives it this bright freshness that adds so much to the dish.

We're also gonna add in 1/4 cup of mayonnaise, you might not think that that's a lot, but it's gonna go pretty far with this.

You can add more, but don't add any more mayonnaise until you've already mixed it first.

Next we've got 3 cloves of some crushed garlic, a dash of salt and pepper, 1/2 teaspoon of cayenne pepper.

Now when you're using cayenne peppers and hot flavors, don't think you're making the dish hot.

In actuality, the heat of that brings out the sweetness from the mayonnaise, the other flavors, so it doesn't make it spicy, it just makes it better.

Also 1/2 teaspoon of smoked paprika, which is just dried red bell peppers, which is dope, and 2 teaspoons of fresh lemon juice.

The acid in that and the citrus brings out a really nice brightness to the fish and the other flavors, so this is a really - like I keep using the word bright because it is bright, just like your future if you're making this dish.

Okay, we've got our teeny weeny polka dot crostinis, and we got the salmon run salad.

Make sure we're okay, just gonna take a little nosh, just to see how it feels.

[crunching] Fresh fish, fresh dip for the fresh party.

[instrumental lofi music] One of the best things about getting to the top is the great view.

This is the bird's eye view sandwich, and we call it that because we use some turkey in it, and some duck too, but it is an awesome sandwich to pack and bring and carry.

The first thing we're gonna do with this beautiful concoction of a sandwich is we're gonna make another concoction.

We're gonna make a cranberry mayo.

So you've got 1/4 cup of good old mayo, combined with 1/4 cup of a good chunky berry cranberry sauce, not the gel, but the berries.

A teaspoon of granulated garlic, and then a little dash of salt.

Just stir it up and then set that aside, where you get that nice pink color on it.

[clinking of bowl] Some wrist action in there, you know what I mean?

Now, doing a lot of adventuring as a kid growing up, you gotta know how to prepare stuff that can travel well and still taste awesome.

So one of those things you can do is you can take bread, which we're gonna do, and we're actually gonna toast it.

So we're gonna have a little olive oil mixture on one side, and then this awesome taleggio cheese that we're gonna do.

But when I was a young'un, we were going hiking and camping, and I learned a couple quick tricks.

Whenever you're traveling with bread, you're gonna toast it beforehand.

And I did it at one point, another one of the people that we were hiking with did not.

And we get to the top of this place, pulled out our sandwiches, and mine is firm, you know what I mean?

Like, you see this thing, and it's big and stiff and strong.

And his was kind of like falling apart because he hadn't toasted it before.

So make sure you put something extra in it to get where you gotta go.

Let's do that here.

We're gonna take about 1/2 cup of some good old EVOO, another teaspoon of granulated garlic, and a little bit of salt.

We're gonna mix that up.

And then on the bottom of our sandwiches, we're gonna just brush this on there.

[instrumental lofi music] We preheated the oven to 350, so we gonna set our bottoms here.

Always set your bottom down and be good to your bottom.

Now with the tops, what we're gonna do is we're gonna take this taleggio cheese, right?

This is like a brie, it's Italian.

It's awesome and creamy, so it really, really jumps up beautifully with the turkey and the cranberry.

We got our cheese, got our oil, got our bread in the oven for about 5 minutes.

For the heavy protein in this dish, we are gonna roast actual turkey on the bone.

Now, the thing is with bone in meat, the bone acts as an insulator, so it cooks a little bit longer, but it infuses more flavor into the meat itself.

So we're gonna take about a cup and a half of some extra virgin olive oil, then we're gonna add in about a tablespoon or so of minced garlic, then we're gonna throw in a teaspoon of paprika, and then 1 teaspoon of oregano, 1 teaspoon of thyme, 1 teaspoon of parsley.

Get it into this stuff and mix it up good.

Now when you inject poultry, or any meat really, but poultry especially, with any type of marinade, what it does is it not only creates flavor that goes all the way across the meat, it also, at a different level, will keep it moist.

So when we're gonna marinate it, we are gonna use a meat injector.

If you don't have one of these things, don't worry about it.

All you need is a sharp knife, you poke some holes into the flesh, take a turkey baster, jam it in, and give it some squeezes.

So we're gonna take our injector, take a deep old pull of this marinade, and in the fatty parts under the skin, come in at an angle, and we are going to inject it in.

You'll see it start to plump up a little bit.

That's because all the muscle fibers are kinda spreading out, like, "Yo, let this marinade in, it's time to party."

Gonna take some more of this and get some of those good herbs on it, and we're gonna baste the top.

That way we get a little crispy skin to snack on while we're slicing it up.

We're gonna let it sit in the fridge overnight, but minimum of four hours.

Oven, 375, 20 minutes per pound.

This beauty weighs 2 1/2 pounds, so it's going in for 50 minutes.

Ooh, the ciabatta's ready to go.

Oil crispy here.

And the taleggio cheese, which is like a brie.

It's like brie, but it's more robust and tangy, and you can eat the rind, so we like that.

We're gonna take the bottom, and we're gonna hit it with a nice, healthy dollop of this cranberry mayo we got.

Nice spread evenly on there.

Next, we want some arugula.

So arugula has a nice little peppery bite to it, which adds another layer of flavor with that sweetness that we've got and the tartness of the cranberries.

Next, we're gonna put a couple pieces of juicy turkey on there.

To up-level the beautiful lux of this, the luxuriousness of it, we've got duck bacon.

Fatty, crispy, delicious.

We're gonna put a couple pieces of that on there.

And then 2 slices of a beautiful plum tomato.

And then put that beautiful top on.

Usually we're taking tops off, sometimes we're putting them back on.

Just wanna make sure everything's going okay.

[toasted bread crunching] Oh, this sandwich, it ain't for the birds.

The bird's eye view is legit, so I'm gonna fire up the rest of them for our picnic today.

[hip hop music with vocals] STEPHANIE: Well, this is so nice, but it reminds me a little bit of the view - remember when we went to Pratt's Falls?

MATT: Oh my God.

That was awesome, eventually.

STEPHANIE: Yes, it was an adventure.

So friends of ours gave us an idea for going on a hike and going to Pratt's Falls.

Matt made us some peanut butter jelly sandwiches.

There was this place where you could, this great view and people are hand gliding.

ALEX: That was so nice of Matt to make you peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, wow.

STEPHANIE: It's my favorite.

It's my favorite.

MATT: It's her favorite.

STEPHANIE: It's my favorite.

ALEX: It's your favorite, okay, okay.

MATT: And they were pretty baller sandwiches.

ALEX: Back in the day you were like, "I'm a chef, I know how to cook a lot of food."

MATT: But I'm gonna make you peanut butter and jelly.

STEPHANIE: [laughing] Right.

So our friends suggested this place, so you check out the falls, you see this beautiful view.

And we thought that we'd just keep following the trail markers and go on this great hike.

MATT: The blue New York state trail marker, it's all legit.

STEPHANIE: Right, but didn't realize that apparently we were supposed to walk to the falls, see the falls, lovely, and turn around and walk back.

So we kept going and going.

MATT: And going.

It lasted like four weeks basically, we're lost in the wilderness.

ALEX: What was the point that you realized you were walking pretty far without anything around?

MATT: Like after a couple hours, like we're still like in the - APRIL: A couple hours?

MATT: The terrain is changing, like the mountain, like now, you know when you cross like the tree line and like all the vegetation changes, we're like in a desert at some point, we're like, how did we even get here?

STEPHANIE: We were at a place where the grass, now we're not tall, but like the grass was like up mid thigh and we're like whooshing through and - MATT: You're seeing like a lion's tail in the distance, you're like, what is going on?

STEPHANIE: Giraffe in the distance.

ALEX: No snakes, nothing?

MATT: No snakes.

STEPHANIE: Not that we saw, that would have not been good.

ALEX: Oh, they were there.

STEPHANIE: But we ended up at some point running, like coming across this road and seeing this house and this guy, little interesting looking - MATT: Super nice guy, all right, in the middle of nowhere.

But first, now we're like, we ran out of water like weeks ago, right?

We're like sitting there losing weight, and finally I'm like, man, is this gonna be like Silence of the Lambs, or is this gonna be our savior?

So we basically, I throw Stephanie in the grass and run for it, you know?

STEPHANIE: No, but honestly up until this point, I've been like, you're an Eagle Scout, shouldn't you be like a human compass and like telling us how to get where we're going?

Like, look at the sun and direct us to where we were.

ALEX: He didn't get his Eagle Scout in New York State, so the green signs.

STEPHANIE: Yeah, probably, that's it.

MATT: First of all, the situation is as follows.

We knew which direction it was, north, east, west, south, but it didn't matter.

APRIL: You were waiting for the trail to loop back.

MATT: I mean, at one point the signs go from New York State to like Ontario and I'm like, are we in Canada right now?

STEPHANIE: Slight exaggeration, but anyway, so the guy gives us a ride.

We end up being 12 miles away from where our car was parked.

MATT: 12 miles.

STEPHANIE: And he drove like a bit of a crazy person, but we ended up back and - MATT: Yeah!

We lived, it was awesome, like the survival.

First we're like, are we gonna die out here on this long hike?

Then we're by the house, like are we about to get murdered by a serial killer?

And then we're in there and like, am I about to die in a fiery car crash?

'Cause my man is like, I don't want you guys to be late, you've been gone all day.

And he's going so far, like it's like the commercial, like sunglasses are falling off, you know what I mean?

Like, I thought we were gonna go back to the future, that's how fast we were going, but we made it.

STEPHANIE: We did, we made it, and we kept being like, this was a great workout, this was all good.

If we can get through this, we're all set.

MATT: We said the typical dad stuff, like I got my steps in!

ALEX: And those jokes died off after the first hour.

MATT: Yeah, eventually.

And she had the same tone of voice, like she's describing the story when we did that.

But not only did we survive it, now it's a great story, you know what I mean?

Like no one was murdered, I thought, my chances of death were high, not from the potential serial killer or the exposure to the elements, but I thought this one was gonna murder me at some point.

So - but here we are.

APRIL: And now you always remember to tell people, turn around at the wall.

MATT: Yes, actually there's a huge sign up there now, with our picture it says, don't be these idiots, turn around.

[laughing] MATT: Lo and behold, we lived to have another picnic, and it was, there it was.

STEPHANIE: Here we are.

MATT: It made us stronger, and it didn't break us up.

ALEX: I'm glad we're here for this one and not that one.

STEPHANIE: Cheers to that, cheers to that.

MATT: Before we get too excited, we gotta survive this one.

STEPHANIE: [laughing] Yeah.

MATT: Everything is better with a view.

The view we like best, seeing the people we love, smiling, laughing, eating good food, doing the thing.

So a killer picnic, a hike, any adventure relies on one major ingredient, a willingness to get weird.

So do something different.

You wanna discover new things, you gotta be brave.

Take some chances.

Break some rules and break out of the ordinary.

Like Buddha said, there is no path to happiness - happiness is the path.

The Declaration of Independence, it guarantees us the pursuit of happiness, not happiness itself, only the chance to chase it.

So grab a backpack, some water, and some comfy shoes.

Time to change things up.

Go chase some happiness.

[hip hop music with vocals] VO: The William G Pomeroy Foundation helps people celebrate their communitys history by providing grants for historic markers and plaques nationwide.

Information about Pomeroy Foundation grants and partnership opportunities is available at WGPFoundation.org Bear Creek: gourmet burgers, craft beers, custom twists on classics and desserts.

More on Facebook and Instagram at BearCreekRestaurantInc Feed the bear!

[BEAR ROARING]